In conventional electrophotographic label printers using an elongated print medium such as roll paper, when the printer engine needs to be stopped even during printing due to toner exchange, exchange of a regular exchange unit, cooling down, or the like, a waste region (blank) is produced on the roll paper during the time between the temporary suspension and restart. Then, after printing, the blank on the elongated print medium needs to be cut out.
Thus, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. 2008-191215 has proposed a printing system that facilitates the cutting of, for example, such an elongated print medium by recording printing result information on a blank last page of the medium to automatically cut a waste region based on the information. However, the technique has not been to a fundamental solution to the elimination of wastefulness.
In other words, there are problems as follows. While printing is being performed on an elongated print medium such as roll paper, printing sometimes needs to be suspended to supply toner or for some other reason. However, as described above, the temporary suspension during printing causes a waste region to be produced on the elongated print medium and then processing such as cutting of the blank is necessary after printing. Therefore, printing suspension should be avoided as much as possible.